They say it’s a chemical imbalance but isn’t there more to it than that? Isn’t it a psychological disturbance? A curse? Bad Karma?
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a really bad dream, a nightmare
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The symptoms are hallucinations, hearing voices and/or delusional thought. The cure is any medication or therapy that reduce suffering and stop you being a danger to yourself or others. The frequency, intensity and duration of symptoms will vary from individual to individual so will the type of medication and dosage. I didn’t say there is a quick fix.
For me its a blessing in disguise, a blessing that looks like a big bad curse.
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I am going to simplify it - I think that our brains are different than most - we are hypersensitive individuals trying to cope in a ■■■■■■ up world the best we know how - it ain’t easy being SZ
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The most accurate answer that I’ve found is:
Who the f*ck knows?!
Anything from maladapted synaptic connections to transdimentional phasing. Though the most popular theory is the ‘chemical imbalance’ one; that’s the one I probably believe the least.
The problem that I see with the chemical imbalance theory involves how neurons regulate their transmitters/receptors. A chemical imbalance would mean that the regulation system is broken, even though it’s not. For example, if you take a typical AP for years and suddenly get off it you will notice a quick onset of psychosis. This happens because the neurons have adapted to the dopamine blockade caused by the AP by upregulating and growing more receptors to increase dopamine transmission. This means that the neurons actually try to get to the same dopamine transmission amount as they were at before the APs blocked them. Which in turn means APs actually CAUSE a chemical imbalance.
Not to say meds are horrible and shouldn’t be taken or anything, obviously they help a lot of people…just not in the way they think. They aren’t technically ‘meds’ they are more of a patch or a drug. It’s like if the radio in your car is stuck on, you pull out the fuse to turn it off. It doesn’t do anything towards fixing the problem, it just makes it so you can drive around town without listening to mariachi music blasting from your broken radio.
So, what is schizophrenia? Answer: A broken radio.
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In my case, schizophrenia is a vibrational abnormality. It is as if I had the volume up too loud.
Jayster
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This is In no way correct or clinical, but the way I have to see it to beat it is… the past few years I’ve started to see Sz as a host of serious yet small problems that combine forces and become a big problem.
- The chemical imbalances in the brain
- The Genes
- The loss of cognitive ability
- The loss of emotional intuition
- The Anxiety (social or other wise)
- The Depression
etc… etc… etc…
I’ve seen anxiety in non-sz, but not to my extent. I’ve seen lack of motivation in Non-Sz, but not to my extent.
My kid sis does hear voices when there is a huge flare up in the stress. She won’t say it, but I can tell. But she doesn’t have them to my extent. Many non-sz people have cognitive difficulties or depression, but not mixed with everything else.
I’ve seen Non-sz people have many of my same symptoms individually and on a lower level. When it all combines… 
The Sz monster wakes up.
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they dont know is the answer to that!
sz is like driving a super sonic futuristic car with your eyes closed.
take care
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excellent answer Apokalypz, that sums it up
“it just makes it so you can drive around town without listening to mariachi music blasting from your broken radio”
Some people would say, “I’ve been trying to find a better station rather than driving anywhere.”
Its usually mostly a chemical imbalance, right, but there are sometimes structural abnormalities of the brain as well, which result in treatment-resistant cases. I am a psych major concentrating in behavioral neuroscience, I just got my term paper on schizophrenia back. It was a pretty in depth research paper, 16 pages, and I got an A and was highly praised for it.
My shrink told me he wants to read it. I’ll give him the hard copy with the professors remarks on it 
It feels good to be aware of my condition, I know a whole lot about my own brain and it’s no coincidence that I am one of the highest functioning and furthest in recovery members of this site. Mind over matter. Faulty neurology won’t stop me.
But to be more to the point, it is a maladaptive
genetic mutation. It’s a mutation that does not help us as animals, it
■■■■■ our lives up beyond repair a third of the time. Schizophrenia is
maladaptive- it is a mutation that is bad and doesnt lead to increased
reproduction, with some exceptions. Paranoid schizophrenia is argued to
not necessarily be absolutely maladaptive, by some people, and they
make a good point. Paranoid people with low negative symptoms survive
quite well. Flourish? No. Survive? That’s the name of the game with
paranoid schizophrenia. The brain is malfunctioning and perceiving
false alarms; delusions and hallucinations. What happens is
hyper-vigilance. On the other hand, 15% kill themselves within 30 years
of being diagnosed. So keep that in mind.
People with paranoid schizophrenia will sometimes REALLY SURPRISE
YOU. They can be highly functioning and otherwise normal seeming until
you ask them what they are thinking. Paranoid schizophrenics have been
observed to function the highest, by far, than other types of
schizophrenics. I myself was on a full scholarship to a university when I
was diagnosed, and at an elite prep school when my illness struck. I
made A’s and B’s and exercised.
I became an alcoholic halfway through by first year of college, then I
was diagnosed. What is odd is that I was in the university honors
program, taking honors classes and making A’s and B+'s. What is even
stranger was that I was 5’7, 165lbs and had no fat, I was always getting
attention at pool parties and stuff for looking like a UFC fighter. I
was too paranoid to respond to girls hitting on me. Once you talked to
me, you could guess that I wasn’t quite right in the head, I would
sometimes just blankly stare at people and not say much, but I looked
like a douchebag who worked out really hard trying to get some ass. No,
I worked out because I was restless and angry at life.
Schizophrenia is a genetic disorder that is maladaptive. Sure, it
might have contributed to success for some people in history (mainly
warriors or prophets, like Joan of Arc of Viking berserkers, historians
have inferred that the Viking berserkers were mentally ill, and they
gave them psychoactive mushrooms to make them raging mad and bite
through their wooden shields while forming a line) but it doesnt help
the vast majority of people. Its been observed to make people violent.
I wrote a paper on that last semester, the statistics are not pretty,
we paranoid schizophrenics have relatively violent reputations. I
myself have been surrounded by 7 cops and cuffed and stuffed into the
cruiser and taken to a crisis assessment center.
Schizophrenia is not your fault. Remember that.
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yes thats the biological model that you learned about mortim ouse do you believ its a simple as that tho? a chemical imbalance now pop your pills? science doesnt know much about the brain it was relatively short time ago they were giving people ect with no anaesthetic and labotomies.
@mortimermouse If you think your the best off in this form, you have to understand somewhere down the line you turned gay, which scientific studies now show things like that are due to brain chemistry.
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Schizophrenia has structural abnormalities in about a dozen regions of the brain, most of them responsible for executive functioning, you wouldn’t understand the latin names for the parts of the brain so I wont sound pretentious by giving a list of words that you dont understand. What these regions of the brain DO is what matters. They control things like visual and auditory perception (hallucinations…) and threat assessment (delusions) Cortisol, Dopamine, Serotonin and Glutamate are imbalanced in the brain, there are inappropriate levels of these neurotransmitters throughout the brain, which have been very strongly correlated to positive symptoms, hallucinations, delusions, disorganization. I am grossly simplifying these concepts for you, I have written long papers and given presentations on schizophrenia and this is like the baby food version on the 16 page research paper I just got handed back with an A written on it and four praising remarks written on it too, with zero criticisms on the entire paper.
There is a list of about a dozen genes and groups of genes correlated with schizophrenia. Again, they have names that make no sense, they’re just like computer code, letters and numbers, so I wont waste my time going back to my research papers to list them out when they mean nothing to someone who doesnt have a degree in neuroscience. I don’t keep brain regions and individual gene names floating on the top of my head, I have to go look at my notes. I think every undergrad student in my program does the same, its a whole lot to remember. But you sound like you dont wanna hear anything overly scientific so I am just simplifying the point and not wasting my time listing off Latin names for brain regions and gene codes.
I dont want to argue, Im just sharing what I have learned in school. Please do not verbally attack me for being rational and following informative conformity and accepting what my professors have said to be true.
It’s not purely theoretical, the fact that I havent heard a voice or had a delusion while typing this because I take meds which regulate dopamine, serotonin and glutamate levels in the brain gives these theories much more of a reputation than alternative theories about schizophrenia. There’s a reason some theories are labeled “alternative”, it’s because they have hardly any reputation for being true.
If you ask any MD or PhD in psychology about this post, they will agree, probably because I am just regurgitating what they regurgitated at me, I say that because they learned from their academic superiors before they became superiors themselves, they carry the torch of knowledge. I am doing very well as an honors student in the psychology program at a university, I will likely become a professor or at least earn a master’s within the next decade. Unless I have a full blown relapse, I pretty much am already as good as gone to grad school with my GPA. But even when I was unmedicated and psychotic, I made a 3.5, so I think I will have my graduate degree whether I am sane or not.
Knowledge about my condition is my key to success. I have never really let schizophrenia take my life from me, I let it take my health when I became an alcoholic back when I was 19 but I did not let it take my full scholarship to school and my above-average GPA.
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hi mortimous wait a minute here or ill patella you in the mandible LOL
i learned something from your post so its all good tcx
atabo, 2 questions for you,
where are you from?
have you been to your dr yet?
what are all these characters for in your text { = 1,2,3 etc